The Confessions Of A Kitchen Klutz: How Cooking Classes Changed

A Life

September 05, 1985|By Richard Phillips.

Every cook moves on his own timetable. So no snickering. Please.

I was 6 years old when I learned how to make cereal without spilling milk onto the Katzenjammer Kids. A few years later, with my fantasies tilting from the Sunday funnies to blonds and brunets, I learned from Dad how to grill kielbasa and steak.

I stopped learning soon afterwards.

Why I have resisted food instruction for the better part of 41 years, I`m not sure. I suspect the reason is not linked to blonds and brunets, though my daughter insists I would be better off if I paid more attention to cooking than chasing impossible romances.

Anyhow, you know how time flies. Flattops came and went. So did Bryl Creem, a college education, four presidencies and a 7 1/2-year marriage. Through it all, my working definition of a meal was ``anything edible made by anyone else.`` My indifference toward cooking, meanwhile, swelled to almost phobic aversion.

Then something happened to spoil everything.

In 1975, I became a bachelor again. I had two kids with me half of the time and food skills to make just three meals--Wheaties, kielbasa and steak.

Clearly I was in a pickle. I also could boil water and scramble eggs, but not much else.

Thus, it came to pass that, at age 31 or so, I learned how to cook spaghetti noodles. With a lot of sauce and a little care, my kids gained modest nourishment without spilling Ragu all over Spiderman.

That same year I learned how to cook chili from canned tomatoes and kidney beans, to fashion stew from chuck steak and bay leaf, and eventually, how to cook turkey in the oven, albeit with a sympathetic neighbor`s aid.

My kids observe I`ve yet to learn how to cook, for that matter. They also say I`m fortunate so many sympathetic friends keep us eating in a style to which we want to be accustomed.

I suspect they discussed my situation with several of my bosses. Two months ago, the editor of the Food Guide diplomatically suggested that I had the right stuff to write about cooking schools for neophytes.

``You`re the ideal person for the job. You know how to write so well on subjects you know absolutely nothing about,`` she said. ``Besides, Chicago is filled with people who don`t know how to cook, even though they need to. You deserve each other . . . I mean, you`re in a special position to help.``

I had to agree. I know women who cook no better than I. Moreover, dozens of single parents and married men have confessed to impoverished kitchen skills over beer and pretzels in the last 10 years, arousing my suspicion that cooking ignorance hereabouts may be more rampant than single bars on Rush Street.

So I volunteered. I owed the boss a favor, anyhow, seeing as how I sneak free eats in the test kitchen.

Enter Jacalyn Linko, who sees people like me all the time--usually in groups of four.

Linko is a food professional who teaches cooking from her Evanston home. Her do-it-yourself approach costs more (about $30 per session) than demonstration classes at Williams-Sonoma or Carson Pirie Scott & Co. in the Loop. It`s money well spent, though, and you can eat what you cook.

As I walked into Linko`s tiny kitchen, she smiled widely, tossed me a clean white apron and nodded to her durable colleague--a hefty butcher-block table probably acquainted with every food from asparagus to zucchini. Then she said:

``Before you leave, you`ll know how to make roasted chicken, a tasty pilaf, the best Greek-style broiled snapper you`ve ever eaten and a blueberry pie. I`m tossing in spinach souffle just to prove you`re not as dumb as you look.``

(Linko didn`t actually utter that last sentence, but I`ve heard those thoughts before.)

Her kitchen is real, not like one of those garnished palaces in House Beautiful to make everyone else unhappy. It had clean clutter on a small counter, a shallow sink and an otherwise wholesome message for neophytes

--``This isn`t the Ritz; but the food that comes out of here is what Mom used to make.``

In the course of three 1 1/2-hour cooking sessions, Linko also covered fundamentals. These included necessary oddities, such as how to test the quality of dry herbs (they fade on the shelf; unscrew jar lid for strong herb odor before buying); how to distinguish fresh fish from one so old on the rack only a sucker would buy (if eyes are sunk, forget it); and how to cook so it doesn`t taste like every other fish you`ve ever had. She included spicing up a roasting chicken (as well as how to truss poultry and slice without mangling); and--this is basic--how to transform a kitchen klutz into a modestly effective cook.

I think you get the idea.

``I get a lot of people who say they know nothing about cooking. I think most leave feeling they learned some basics and still had fun,`` says Linko, 34, who learned her business via motherly instruction in Joliet, a French cooking school with teacher Madeleine Kamman in Annecy and frequent experimentation.